The increasing sophistication of undersea seismic investigation, and the increasing quietness of seagoing vessels, mandates that the detectors used in such exploration and surveillance be made correspondingly more sensitive. Beamforming systems, comprised most generally of an array of sensors combined with data processing equipment, have been used for some time to perform these functions. Beamforming is the process of signal detection in a non-dispersive medium in which output signals of a plurality of sensors are sampled at preselected times, so that a wavefront traversing the sensors in phase with the sampling of the sensors will generate outputs that reinforce when added together into one signal, or beam, greatly increasing the signal-to-noise ratio over one sensor alone. The specific times at which to sample depends on sensor geometry (spatial dispositon of the sensors with respect to one another) and the desired angle of wavefront incidence (the "look angle"). By submitting sampled sensor outputs to plural sets of time delays before beamforming, the beamformer system then has plural look angles, defining a particular field of view and angular sensitivity for such a beamformer system. Unfortunately, to increase beamformer sensitivity and angular resolution requires a corresponding increase in the number of beamformer sensors, and the amount of data processing hardware. Because these beamformers optimally are located in the field, i.e. at sea, the platforms upon which to mount such beamformers, and the power sources available are usually predetermined by concerns other than optimal operation of the beamformers. Therefore, any change in beamformer design that can reduce the space occupied by these beamformers, increase their speed of operation, and reduce their power consumption would be most welcome. Optical processing equipment is inherently quicker, smaller and lighter than its conventional equivalents, and, because optical devices are more readily adapted to processing in parallel, optical processors are especially well suited to meeting the needs of the art.